METAR code

I've got to side with Jay on this one. Given modern technology there is no reason for anything other than plain english. While Chris may be able to parse this, there are a lot of pilots that can't. This is evident by the amount of effort needed to translate this. Having to dig up the books to figure out the less used phrases is really safety of flight thing. I don't think there is any good reason for anything less than palin english.

John

Originally Posted by Chris Rowland

Jay Honeck wrote:

I can't really get it.

Isn't it odd that in 2008, as Flight Service is consolidated and modernized,
that they are still transmitting weather information encoded for teletype
machines?

Sure, we all learn(ed) to parse it (with notable exceptions like this one),
but it's not like they lack bandwidth anymore.

Not everyone receiving weather data has a fast data connection. And while one
METAR may be small, getting the full set of METARs from every station,
worldwide, can get quite large, even with condensed format. Storing that data
for a while could be even more difficult with an expanded format, that still
contained the same basic data. Having a (mostly) standardized format is useful
for reading too, I can quickly parse many METARs for a flight very quickly, much
faster than when the data is in plain English (or any language).